Pattnmaker
Stainless
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2007
- Location
- Hamilton, Ontario
A few months ago I bought a used VMC for what seemed a really good deal at the time. I bought it from an auctioneer, they had an auction that several machines did not sell and the shop had to be cleared out. I offered a really low price and was surprised when they took the offer. Its a 2005 Huron KX8 with a Siemens 840D controller and a 24000 rpm spindle. The table size is just about perfect for the type of work I want to use it for and the high speed spindle could come in handy for some of the detail work I do with tiny cutters (I often use 3/64" and 1/2mm for raised lettering in aluminum).
The controller booted up at the shop it came from. The machinery mover dropped the machine off just before Christmas and between my daughter visiting over the holidays and U being busy right after it was 3-4 weeks before we got power to the machine. When we tried to start it up the controller just hung up during boot up. After several tries and leaving for several hours we go a partial boot up of windows just enough to say there was a bad sector on the drive. I don't know if the machinery movers shutdown or the transport of the machine caused the damage but it's bad.
I called a CNC repair guy who I have used in the past who has been pretty good. He told me no problem he had recently fixed a machine with a bad hard drive and it would be no problem. He took the controller out of the machine to take to a specialist to change the hard drive and recover the data. It took several weeks for the specialist to get back to the repair guy. They needed a "ghost" of the drive to copy to get me a new drive. I located an identical machine an hour away that was in the same auction as this one spoke with the owner of the machine copied the manual I had for him and dropped off some extra covers from my machine to him. He agreed we could copy his hard drive and I told him we would provide him with a spare hard drive as well.
I gave my repair guy contact for the shop with the other machine and asked him to get it copied. After several weeks of chasing them about this I finally got a response last week. The specialist tells me there is a danger of damaging the drive in the other machine and he needs to get someone to sign off on absolving him of any liability on this.
I cannot take the chance of wiping out the had drive on someone else's machine so I am back to square one. I called and emailed the dealer for Huron here in Canada weeks ago and had no reply. Siemens did get back to me pretty quickly and needed the controller serial number which I didn't have at the time because the controller was out of my shop. Now that I have the controller back I am going to have to email him back with the serial number.
Will Siemens actually be able to help me in this situation as I assume the parameters are all on the hard drive? Maybe they can get the controller operating system working but will that do me any good? I am going to try contacting Huron but with the current situation in France I don't know if they will get back to me about a 15 year old machine. I am now worried that I bought an expensive boat anchor. Wishing I hadn't gone and bought a bunch of HSK toolholders for the machine before I had it running.
The controller booted up at the shop it came from. The machinery mover dropped the machine off just before Christmas and between my daughter visiting over the holidays and U being busy right after it was 3-4 weeks before we got power to the machine. When we tried to start it up the controller just hung up during boot up. After several tries and leaving for several hours we go a partial boot up of windows just enough to say there was a bad sector on the drive. I don't know if the machinery movers shutdown or the transport of the machine caused the damage but it's bad.
I called a CNC repair guy who I have used in the past who has been pretty good. He told me no problem he had recently fixed a machine with a bad hard drive and it would be no problem. He took the controller out of the machine to take to a specialist to change the hard drive and recover the data. It took several weeks for the specialist to get back to the repair guy. They needed a "ghost" of the drive to copy to get me a new drive. I located an identical machine an hour away that was in the same auction as this one spoke with the owner of the machine copied the manual I had for him and dropped off some extra covers from my machine to him. He agreed we could copy his hard drive and I told him we would provide him with a spare hard drive as well.
I gave my repair guy contact for the shop with the other machine and asked him to get it copied. After several weeks of chasing them about this I finally got a response last week. The specialist tells me there is a danger of damaging the drive in the other machine and he needs to get someone to sign off on absolving him of any liability on this.
I cannot take the chance of wiping out the had drive on someone else's machine so I am back to square one. I called and emailed the dealer for Huron here in Canada weeks ago and had no reply. Siemens did get back to me pretty quickly and needed the controller serial number which I didn't have at the time because the controller was out of my shop. Now that I have the controller back I am going to have to email him back with the serial number.
Will Siemens actually be able to help me in this situation as I assume the parameters are all on the hard drive? Maybe they can get the controller operating system working but will that do me any good? I am going to try contacting Huron but with the current situation in France I don't know if they will get back to me about a 15 year old machine. I am now worried that I bought an expensive boat anchor. Wishing I hadn't gone and bought a bunch of HSK toolholders for the machine before I had it running.